When I
think of my littleness and my limitations on the one hand and of the
expectations raised about me on the other, I become dazed for the moment; but I
come to myself as soon as I realize that these expectations are a tribute not to
me, a curious mixture of Jekyll and Hyde, but to the incarnation, however
imperfect but comparatively great, in me of the two priceless qualities of truth
and non-violence. I must, therefore, not shirk the responsibi­lity of giving
what aid I can to fellow seekers after Truth from the West.
I have
already dealt with a letter from America. I have before me one from Germany. It
is a closely reasoned letter. It has remained with me for nearly a month. At
first I thought I would send a private reply and let it be published in Germany
if the correspondent desired it. But having re-read the letter I have come to
the conclu­sion that I should deal with it in these columns. I give the letter
below in full:
"Not only
India but also the rest of the earth has heard your message of Satyagraha and
Swadeshi. A great number of young people in Europe believe in your
creed. They see in it a new attitude to political things put into action, of
which till now they had only dreamed.
But also
among the young people who are convinced of the truth of your message are many
who dissent from some details of your demands on men which seem wrong to them.
In their -name is this letter written.
In answer
to a question you declared on the 21st of March, 1921, that Satyagraha demands
absolute non-violence, and that even a woman who is in danger of being violated
must not defend herself with violence. On the other hand, it is known that you
recommended the punishment of General Dyer by the English Government, which
shows that you see the necessity for law guaranteed through violence. From this
I can but conclude that you do not object to capital punishment and so do not
condemn killing in general. You value life so low that you allow thousands of
Indians to lose theirs for Satyagraha; and doubtless you know that the least
interference with the life of men — imprisonment — is mainly based on the same
principle as the strongest — killing — for in each case men are caused by an
outside force to diverge from their Dharma. A man who thinks logically knows
that it is the same principle that causes his imprisonment for a few days or his
execu­tion, and that the difference is only in the size, not in the kind, of
interference. He knows, too, that a man who stands for punishment in general
must not shrink from killing.
You see
in non-cooperation not an ideal only but also a safe and quick way to freedom
for India, a way possible only where a whole population has to revolt against a
Government that has the force of arms. But when a whole State wants to get its
rights from another State, the principle of non-co-operation is powerless, for
this other one may get a number of other States to form an alliance with it even
when some of the other States remain neutral. Not until a real League of Nations
exists, to which every State belongs, can non- co-operation become a real power,
since no State can afford to be isolated from all the others. That is why we
fight for the League of Nations; but that is also the reason why we try to
retain a strong police force, lest internal revolts and disorder should make all
foreign policy impossible. That is why we understand that other Governments are
doing what they forbade us to do, arming themsel­ves in case of an attack by
their enemies. They are, for the time being, obliged to do so, and we really
ought to do the same if we do not want to be continually violated. We hope that
you will see our point. If you do, we should be very much obliged to you if you
would say so in answer to this letter, or it is necessary that the youth of
Europe learns your true attitude to these questions. But please do not think
that we want you to forswear something that is one of the main points of your
creed — Satyagraha.
But we
see Satyagraha not in an absolute non-violence which never, nowhere, has been
really carried out, even by you, or even by Christ himself who drove the usurers
out of the temple. With us Satyagraha is the unreserved disposition to
brotherhood and sacrifice which you are showing us so splendidly with the Indian
People; and we hope to be growing into the same state of mind, since it has been
understood that a system may be wicked but never a whole class or a whole people
(you wrote about this on the 13th of July, 1921), and that one ought
to feel pity but not hatred for the blind defenders of wickedness. Men who come
to understand this are taking their first steps on the new way to brotherhood
between all men; and this way will lead to the goal, to the victory of truth, to
Satyagraha.
We ask
you in your answer not only to advice us to fight for our country in the way we
think right, but we would very much like to know what you think to be right,
especially how you justify an entire non-violence which we see as a resignation
to all real fighting against wickedness and for this reason wicked in itself —
as we would call a policeman wicked who let a criminal escape unpunished.
Our
conviction is that we ought to follow our own Dharma first, and before all that
we ought to live the life designed for us by God, but that the right and the
duty is given to us to interfere with the life of our fellow-men when they ask
us to do so or when we see in such interference a way to fight a threatening
evil for all the world. We believe that, otherwise one is not right in
interfering, for only God can see through the soul of men and judge what is the
right way for men; and we believe that there is no greater sacrilege to be found
than to assume the place of God — which sacrilege we believe the English people
to be guilty of, as they think to have the mission to interfere with people all
over the world.
For this
reason we do not understand how you can recom­mend to married people to deny
themselves to each other without mutual agreement, for such an interference with
the rights given by marriage can drive a man to crimes. You ought to advice
divorce in those cases.
Please
answer our these questions. We are so glad to have the model given by you that
we want very much to be quite clear about the right way to live up to your
standard."
In my
travels I have not the file of Young India before me, but there is no
difficulty about my endorsing the state­ment that "Satyagraha demands absolute
non-violence, and that even a woman who is in danger of being violated must not.
defend herself with violence. “Both these state­ments relate to an ideal state,
and therefore are made with reference to those men and women who have so far
purified themselves as to have no malice, no anger, no violence in them. That
does not mean that the woman in the imagined case would quietly allow herself to
be vio­lated. In the first instance, such a woman would stand in no danger of
violence; and in the second, if she did, with­out doing violence to the ruffian
she would be able com­pletely to defend her honour.
But I
must not enter into details. Even women who can defend themselves with violence
are not many. Happily, however, cases of indecent assaults are not also very
many. Be that as it may, I believe implicitly in the proposition that perfect
purity is its own defence. The veriest ruffian becomes for the time being tame
in the presence of resplen­dent purity.
The
writer is not correctly informed about my attitude in regard to General Dyer. He
would be pleased to know that not only did I not recommend any punishment of
General Dyer, but even my colleagues, largely out of their generous regard for
me, waived the demands for punish­ment. What, however, I did ask for, and I do
press for even now, is the stopping of the pension to General Dyer. It is no
part of the plan of non-violence to pay the wrong­doer for the wrong he does,
which practically would be the case if I became a willing party to the
continuation of the pension to General Dyer. But let not me be misunder­stood. I
am quite capable of recommending even punish­ment to wrong-doers under
conceivable circumstances; for instance, 1 would not hesitate under the present
state of society to confine thieves and robbers, which is in itself a kind of
punishment. But I would also admit that it is not Satyagraha, and that it is a
fall from the pure doctrine. That would be an admission, not of the weakness of
the doctrine but the weakness of myself. I have no other remedy to suggest in
such cases in the present state of society. I am therefore satisfied with
advocating the use of prisons more as reformatories than as places of
punishment.
But I
would draw the distinction between killing and detention or even corporal
punishment. I think that there a difference not merely in quantity but also in
quality. I can recall the punishment of detention. I can make reparation to the
man upon whom I inflict corporal punishment. But once a man is killed, the
punishment is beyond recall or reparation, God alone can take -life, because He
alone gives it.
I hope
there is no confusion in the writer's mind when he couples the self-immolation
of a Satyagrahi with the punishment imposed from without. But in order to avoid
even a possibility of it, let me make it clear that the doctrine of violence has
reference only to the doing of injury by one to another. Suffering injury in
one's own person is, on the contrary, of the essence of non-violence and is the
chosen substitute for violence to others. It is not because I value life low
that I can countenance with joy thousands voluntarily losing their lives for
Satyagraha, but because I know that it results in the long run in the least loss
of life, and, what is more, it ennobles those who lose their lives and morally
enriches the world for their sacri­fice. I think that the writer is correct in
saying that non- co-operation is not merely an ideal but also "a safe and quick
way to freedom for India". I do suggest that the doctrine holds good also as
between States and States. I know that I am treading on delicate ground if I
refer to the late war. But I fear that I must, in order to make the position
clear. It was a war of aggrandizement, as I have understood, on either part. It
was a war for divid­ing the spoils of the exploitation of weaker races —-
other­wise euphemistically called the world commerce. If Germany today changed
her policy and made a determination to use her freedom, not for dividing the
commerce of the world but for protecting, through her moral superiority, the
weaker races of the earth, she could certainly do that without armament. It
would be found that before general disarma­ment in Europe commences, as it must
someday unless Europe is to commit suicide, some nation will have to dare to
disarm herself and take large risks. The level of non­violence in that nation,
if that event happily comes to pass, will naturally have risen so high as to
command universal respect. Her judgments will be uneming, her decisions will be
firm, her capacity for heroic self-sacrifice will be great, and she will want to
live as much for other nations as for herself. I may not push this delicate
subject any further. I know that I am writing in a theoretical way upon a
practical question without knowing all its bearings. My only excuse is, if I
understand it correctly, that that is what the writer has wanted me to do.
I do
justify entire non-violence, and consider it possible in relation between man
and man and nations and nations; but it is not " a resignation from all real
fighting against wickedness On the contrary, the non-violence of my conception
is a more active and more real fighting against wickedness than retaliation
whose very nature is to increase wickedness. I contemplate a mental, and
therefore a moral, opposition to immoralities. I seek entirely to blunt the edge
of the tyrant's sword, not by putting up against it a sharper-edged weapon, but
by disappointing his expecta­tion that I would be offering physical resistance.
The resistance of the soul that I should offer instead would elude him. It would
at first dazzle him, and at last compel recogni­tion from him, which recognition
would not humiliate him but would uplift him. It may be urged that this again is
an ideal state. And so it is. The propositions from which I have drawn my
arguments are as true as Euclid's definitions, which are none the less true,
because in practice we are unable even to draw Euclid's line on a blackboard.
But even a geometrician finds it impossible to get on without bearing in mind
Euclid's definitions. Nor may we, the German friend, his colleagues and myself,
dispense with the fundamental propositions on which the doctrine of Satyagraha
is based.
There
remains for me now only one ticklish question to answer. In a most ingenious
manner the writer has compared the English arrogation of the right of becoming
tutors to the whole world to my views on relations between married people. But
the comparison does not hold good. The marriage bond involves seeing each other
only by mutual agreement. But surely abstention requires no consent. Married
life would be intolerable, as it does become, when one partner breaks through
all bonds of restraint. Marriage confirms the right of union between two
partners to the exclusion of all the others when in their joint opinion they
consider such union to be desirable. But it confers no right upon one partner to
demand obedience of the other to one's wish for union. What should be done when
one partner on moral or other grounds cannot conform to the wishes of the other
is a separate question. Personally, if divorce was the only alternative, I
should not hesitate to accept it, rather than interrupt my moral progress —
assuming that I want to restrain myself on purely moral grounds.